In yet more huge news out of the Trump Administration that is exactly the sort of thing voters elected it to do, it was announced that the administration will be fighting to claw back over $1 billion in federal Medicaid dollars that it alleges was spent by the blue state of California on healthcare for illegal immigrants, including those with horrible records of violent criminal activity.
As background, though Medicaid dollars are theoretically prohibited from being used to cover the cost of healthcare for illegal immigrants, there are a number of large loopholes that sanctuary jurisdictions have long taken advantage of to help subsidize their provision of healthcare to illegal immigrants.
So, though they are forbidden from using federal tax dollars for illegal alien healthcare and are theoretically supposed to only be using state tax dollars for such purposes, it appears that those loopholes have led to Democrat jurisdictions using federal tax dollars they receive as part of the Medicaid payments they get to help pay for illegal alien healthcare.
In fact, a recent report found that blue jurisdictions could have spent over $1 billion on such purposes over just 2024 and 2025. As could be expected, the Trump Administration finds that use of taxpayer dollars to be entirely unacceptable. As such, it is striking back by trying to claw those dollars back.
The report that found as much was a preliminary audit carried out by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a government entity. It found that, mostly during just 2024 and 2025, California, DC, Illinois, the state of Washington, Colorado, and Oregon together spent a massive $1,351,204,127 in federal Medicaid funding on healthcare for illegal immigrants. That spending was improper.
By far the worst offender was the notorious sanctuary state of California, which was discovered to have spent a horrifying $1 billion in federal Medicaid dollars on healthcare for illegal immigrants, according to the infuriating CMS report. The others were far less severe violators of the law, with the next largest violator, Illinois, improperly spending $30 million on healthcare for illegal aliens.
Now, the Trump Administration is reportedly planning on holding them accountable by clawing the money back. Such is what CMS spokesperson Emily Hilliard told Fox News Digital in a statement, explaining that the law is not optional and these sanctuary jurisdictions have broken it. She began, “Protecting Medicaid from waste, fraud and abuse isn’t optional. It’s the law.
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Continuing, Hilliard noted that the various blue jurisdictions at issue have effectively stolen from American citizens and are thus facing legal retribution, saying, “Every dollar misspent on illegal healthcare spending is a dollar taken from vulnerable Americans. Federal law forbids using Medicaid funds for illegal immigrants, yet several Democrat-led states did it anyway.”
Concluding, she noted that the money will be clawed back, as CMS is “aggressively” auditing the blue jurisdictions at issue that put illegal aliens first and Americans last. She said, “The Trump administration won’t tolerate it. CMS is auditing aggressively, recovering every dollar and holding states accountable.”
Watch Gavin Newsom get called out for his massive spending on healthcare for illegal aliens here: